FROM BEHAVIOR TO BRAIN AND BACK AGAIN Book Review of Orbach on Lashley-Hebb

Abstract

Orbach's examination of the work of Lashley and Hebb is of great historical interest, but it illustrates a vast gap, both past and present, between research on the nervous system and research on behavior. Grand strides in the neurosciences have taken place with insufficient attention to the behavior of the organisms that are the hosts of nervous systems. In the final analysis, nervous systems are selected by evolutionary contingencies on the basis of the behavior that they engender. If we fail to understand the behavior, we will probably also fail to understand how the brain serves it. As we move away from the Decade of the Brain into the Decade of Behavior, those unfamiliar with the properties of behavior will be at a disadvantage when they seek its sources in the brain, because they will not know what they should be looking for. Lashley was on the right track when he used the properties of serial order in behavior to make inferences about the nervous system, but too often both Lashley and Hebb speculated about the nervous system without firm grounding in what was even then known about learning and behavior. We now know much more, and neuroscience and the science of behavior have each reached a point at which a modern synthesis holds great promise.